The National Guard in Politics

Derthick, Martha. The National Guard in Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.

“With admirable clarity Martha Derthick has analyzed the political activities of the National Guard throughout its existence. This study of the National Guard as a political institution has particular pertinence because the Guard has always depended on the federal government for its… More

The Influence of Federal Grants: Public Assistance in Massachusetts

Derthick, Martha. The Influence of Federal Grants: Public Assistance in Massachusetts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.

“This book reports an important study of the impact of federal aid on public assistance programs and their administration in a state which had a highly developed public assistance program when the Social Security Act was enacted in 1935. It examines in depth the ways in which the… More

New Towns in-Town: Why a Federal Program Failed

Derthick, Martha. New Towns In-Town: Why a Federal Program Failed. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1972.

“New Towns in-Town . . . chronicled the demise of a federal program to build model new communities on surplus federal land—socially and racially mixed, beacons of hope amid the urban tumult and inner-city squalor of the riot-torn Sixties. The idea for the New Towns initiative came… More

Between State and Nation: Regional Organizations of the United States

Derthick, Martha. Between State and Nation: Regional Organizations of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1974.

“The author is content with the . . . modest goals of describing what has happened when regional organizations were formed, and why it is visionary to expect much else in a democratic government designed according to the principles of federalism and separation of powers and… More

Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants

Derthick, Martha. Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1975.

“Uncontrollable Spending for Social Services Grants . . . chronicled not how a high-profile federal initiative had fizzled but rather how an inconspicuous one had mushroomed, way beyond anything that its authors and federal overseers had anticipated. . . . Derthick’s starting point… More

Policymaking for Social Security

Derthick, Martha. Policymaking for Social Security. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1979.

“Probably [Derthick’s] best known study was Policymaking for Social Security (1979), which won the Gladys Kammerer award of the American Political Science Association. The book analyzed how Social Security grew from a small program at its birth into a political fortress with almost… More

The Politics of Deregulation

Derthick, Martha, and Paul J. Quirk. The Politics of Deregulation. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1985.

“The standard wisdom among political scientists has been that ‘iron triangles’ operated among regulatory agencies, the regulated industries, and members of Congress, all presumably with a stake in preserving regulation that protected the industries from competition. Despite almost… More

Agency under Stress: The Social Security Administration in American Government

Derthick, Martha. Agency under Stress: The Social Security Administration in American Government. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1990.

“Prize-winning author Martha Derthick draws on the recent experience of the Social Security Administration to examine the quality of policymaker’s guidance and the feasibility of their policies. Derthick concludes that many structural features of American government hinder good… More

Dilemmas of Scale in America’s Federal Democracy

Derthick, Martha, ed. Dilemmas of Scale in America’s Federal Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

“In the classical political thought of the West, it was supposed that democracies must be small and direct. Democracy was a form in which all citizens must participate, thus it could exist only on a very circumscribed scale—that of the Greek city-state, in which, ideally, an assembly… More

Up in Smoke: From Legislation to Litigation in Tobacco Politics

Derthick, Martha, ed. Up in Smoke: From Legislation to Litigation in Tobacco Politics. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2002.

“In recent years, tobacco politics has been a multi-layered issue fraught with significant legal, commercial, and public policy implications. From the outset, Martha A. Derthick’s Up in Smoke took a nuanced look at tobacco politics in a new era of ‘adversarial legalism’ and the… More

Keeping the Compound Republic: Essays on Federalism

Derthick, Martha. Keeping the Compound Republic: Essays on American Federalism. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.

“In Keeping the Compound Republic, a 2001 collection of her essays published by Brookings Institution Press, Derthick explained her lifetime interest in federalism and skepticism of centralization, stating that she had a ‘strong personal preference for a form of government that… More